Are Right and Left-Libertarians Fellow Travellers?

“I write about peace and criticize the barriers to peace; that’s easy. What’s harder is to create a better world… and what’s so exciting about at last visiting Venezuela is that I can see how a better world is being created.” – Professor of Linguistics Emeritus, Noam Chomsky

I find it interesting that in this interview Noam Chomsky was introduced as a “fellow” anarchist or some such by the interviewer. I have looked him up (Stefan Molyneux), and he appears to be someone who identifies as an “anarcho-capitalist”. Chomsky, however, is a so-called collectivist of which right-libertarians (typically) revile! IMHO Chomsky is a real anarchist, though, because he is against capitalism! You cannot have true free association amongst individuals with an economic system such as capitalism, I’d say. And additionally, I would think that there will be individualists with no concern for their fellow man — in a real anarchist world — but I for one think it’s important to have a component of the biblical precept of being one’s brother’s keeper in such a world!

Moreover, people often counterpose a “we society” versus a “me society”. Some communities may take the character of the latter, but I would hope that the vast majority, instead, would take that of the former! Once again in a future “real anarchist world”. I believe I understand Chomsky’s views correctly and he is someone who supports a we society, and thus is rightly branded a “collectivist” by the right-wing libertarian milieu. I do not consider right and left-libertarians at all to be fellow anarchists, or indeed fellow travelers. So it’s an interesting way to introduce the interview; nonetheless, I think, and as I’d already stated anyway about that.

The interviewer went in a direction that I did not anticipate, showing reverence to the anarcho-syndicalism of Catalonia and the Spanish CNT. Since I’m not well-versed on Molyneux’s views he may be an atypical breed of anarcho-capitalist. (Even perhaps he has been mischaracterized in bios that are out and about there with reference to him.) The rant should be looked at as not necessarily with Molyneux lumped in with the run of the mill/garden variety, stock right-libertarian camp.